Leader Legitimacy in Social Dilemmas: How Do Different Ways of Appointing Leaders Shape Cooperation in Public Good Games?

Economists have studied several avenues to improve cooperation in the frequent situations where individually rational strategies yield socially inefficient outcomes. In public good games, the introduction of a first-mover generally improves contributions, although results are not always consistent. Under the empirically motivated assumption that most agents reciprocate contributions by other players only in part, we hypothesize that a leader's perceived legitimacy matters to stimulate larger contributions. We therefore conduct an experiment where the first-mover in a one-shot sequential public good game is appointed at random or based on two legitimizing features: we select benevolent leaders based on donations to charity in a variation of the dictator game and competent leaders based on performance in a series of control questions about the public good set-up. By also studying how these experimental manipulations affect attitudes towards cooperation, first- and second-order beliefs, as well as legitimacy perceptions, we shed light on the relevance of perceived legitimacy when designing institutions intended to curb social dilemmas.